Article Sidebar

Share this Story: Terry Jones: Eskimos already bit hard by injury bug

Trending

Article content

At 9 a.m. Thursday, the Edmonton Eskimos, as required by the league, revealed their depth chart, roster and injured list for Friday’s game against the B.C. Lions.

And with that, the focus changed from the game being about the return of Mike Reilly and a dozen other former Eskimos players, one ex-Edmonton general manager, one previous EE president and CEO and one former offensive co-ordinator, to a two-year-old storyline.

Terry Jones: Eskimos already bit hard by injury bugBack to video

If the big-picture storyline had been about the 53 players from last year’s team picture who were no longer Eskimos this season, 27 members of the 46-man roster being new to the team this year and only nine returning starters from the final regular season game last year, it became dramatically different before the second game of the season.

One game into the season and this team, which only two seasons ago racked up so many injuries that it became the first in history to pass the $1 million mark in injured players pay, is at it again.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

The Eskimos will face Reilly in his return minus three of their most prominent free agent acquisitions on defense in LB Unamba, DB Orange and LB Lovan Santos Knox, the latter on the one-game list along with DE Alex Bazzie, RB Shaq Cooper and OL Travis Bond.

Back on the active roster this week is free agent WR DaVaris Daniels, odds are he’ll be the healthy scratch along with the global player.

Out for the season is WR Anthony Parker. Prize free agent LT SirVincent Rogers is expected to be gone well past Labour Day and perhaps the rest of the season as well.

Advertisement

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

If it hadn’t been for the butcher bill two years ago, you’d say the Eskimos were entering unprecedented territory.

In 2017 Edmonton had an insane total of 346 man games lost due to injury.

It was Brock Sunderland’s rookie season as a GM.

“A couple of NFL general managers reached out when they found out about that scenario. I asked a few of them about their experience of handing something like this. One of them said, ‘I’ve been a GM over 30 years and I’ve never dealt with that.’

“It was certainly baptism by fire,” said Sunderland.

“You certainly never want to see starters go down this early in the season but that’s football. It’s like I said back when SirVincent got hurt, if you thought there was no chance of that player getting hurt then you wouldn’t work so hard to find quality players to have on the roster.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

“We’re disappointed that all those guys are down but we have other guys on the roster that we believe in and have faith in and believe we can win with.”

With what happened here two years ago when the Eskimos set the injury record, you had to figure head coach Jason Maas had to be telling himself, ‘Well, at least I’ll never have to go through anything like that again.’

“Hopefully we won’t,” he said after the Eskimos walk-through practice in the field house on a soggy afternoon.

“There were a couple of games there that year where we were replacing 10 guys,” he said.

“It’s never a good thing when you’re putting your starters on the injured list. But here we have a ‘next man up’ mentality.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

“We talked about it early in training camp. Everybody that made our team better be ready to play because at a moment’s notice you’re going to be called upon and by the end of the year pretty much everybody in our locker room will play for us. That’s generally what happens.”

Is it getting to the point that the Eskimos need to bring in some sort of specialist to figure out why this team seems to get so many players injured?

With nine players times six games plus the guaranteed longer length of at least Parker and Rogers, plus all the guys on the one-game list, the Eskimos are already guaranteed to have 70-plus man games lost this year and they’re only one game into the season.

Advertisement

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content continued

If it was just a year here and a year there, you’d file it under ‘Stuff Happens.’ But consider the recent history of man-games lost here. The numbers are staggering.

• 2014 — 301

• 2015 — 227

• 2016 — 202

• 2017 — 346

• 2018 — 211

“The Eskimos, to my knowledge, invest more time, energy and resources to recovery from injuries and prevention of injuries than any other team in the league,” said Sunderland.

“If we could put our finger on it, we’d certainly have handled that already. We’ve looked hard at it. I don’t know why it’s been like that with us. It’s unfortunate. But I don’t think there’s a common denominator as to why it’s been happening to us more than other teams.”

Share this article in your social network

Share this Story: Terry Jones: Eskimos already bit hard by injury bug

Trending

Related Stories

This Week in Flyers

Article Comments

Comments

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

Notice for the Postmedia Network

This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.